Way to go Nintendo on such a great donation to help get users back to showing an interest in the library! After the research I did last spring on how gaming programs impact teen use of the library I really understand what a positive impact these gaming initiatives can have on library usage.
It’s great to see large companies like Nintendo supporting the library! I hope a lot more decide to jump on the bandwagon.
The paper examines the potential for use of virtual communities in academic libraries by first examining the uses of virtual communities in academia and then applying some of those uses to the academic library. The paper also uses the research of Henri and Pudelko into the four types of virtual communities and how each is defined and then provides an example of the use of each time in the academic world. The paper especially focuses on the virtual student and how academic libraries can use virtual communities to reach out the the virtual student.
For our group project we looked at the uses for Ning in an academic library setting. Let me just say… I’m addicted! We created a Ning for the fictional L2University Library where we highlighted some of the features that Ning has to offer for the academic library and its users that also ended up including our own collaborative Ning where we did all of our planning for L2University. Now I could focus on the great features that Ning has to offer in this post and you could be reading for days, but what I would rather talk about is the deeper social implications of this social networking tool.
When I would tell my friends and family about the project I was working on the most common reaction was “what’s a Ning?” Well I got tired of trying to explain what Ning is and how it works, so I came up with this simple definition… it’s like MySpace but with a purpose. What I mean by that is while MySpace is one giant social network where the sky is the limit and people only tend to communicate with the people that are “friends” with, Ning however is a bunch of mini-social networks that people join based on a common interest. This is what Henri and Pudelko might call a “community of interest” or a “community of practice.” These people are gathered together in their own little virtual community because they share an interest or a profession.
What does all of this mean for academic libraries you may ask? Well look at why most college students join Facebook. They want to be able to connect with their friends from school virtually. And what is the commonly understood time-waster for most college students? Facebook. So if the academic library offers a virtual meeting ground where students can connect with each other and maybe have the opportunity to tap into some library resources while they’re at it what could be the harm?
As an avid YouTube watcher I have never actually uploaded anything to be watched. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but just never had the time. I sat down at my computer all ready to upload my first video when I realized that I had no way to get my video onto my computer. Once I’ve figured out how to do so I will upload a video and post here about my experience.
In the mean time YouTube has made tech news this week with its new multifile uploader. According to a C|Net article the new uploader will allow users to upload multiple files and has increased the maximum file size from 10MB to 1GB. I also learned something new about YouTube that I had always wondered about. I knew that videos were limited to 10 minutes, but I would always come across videos that were much longer and I always wondered how those people got around the time limit. Apparently YouTube also has a “director” category that people can sign up for. This category is designed for people who create their own content to upload. According to the YouTube help center, however, they are no longer allowing anyone to upload anything longer than 10 minutes but people who had the option previously will still be allowed to.
Every once in a while its good to be able to take a step back, look at your profession, and laugh about the quirks that can create a bond with other that do the same work you do. And I’m not talking about being rude or blunt in anyway. This is the purely humorous kind of funny that I’m finding more and more common as I continue to meet librarians.
Librarians should not waste time preparing for library instruction sessions. It is a law of librarianship that a teaching faculty member will always ask something random and unrelated of you in the middle of your guest lecture to the class. With little or no warning, you’ll be asked to spend 30-45 minutes demonstrating how to do mail merge in Microsoft Word?”
Although libraries and librarians seem to have caught on to the wonder that is Second Life, one of the biggest complaints that any Second Life users have is that they never see anyone else roaming around the virtual world. This seems like a trend with any new sort of online technology that explodes in its own time. I remember when Facebook membership was limited to only a small number of large universities. Well I beginning to think that Second Life’s time has come.
I was both shocked and excited when I learned that Dwight Schrute from NBCs The Office was going to be exploring Second Life on last week’s episode. Then I got even more excited when I learned that just the night before CSI: NY had done an episode featuring Second Life! And to top it all off there is now a Virtual CSI: NY in Second life where you can go and solve the crime just like the detectives did on the show!
Hopefully exposure in these two popular television shows is just the push Second Life needed to take off and we’ll all be seeing a few more people walking around now.
Here’s a clip of Second Life in The Office in case anyone missed it…
Prior to this week I had only ever heard of Ning. Now I fear that I may become addicted. Much like MySpace and Facebook, Ning is a social networking website. What sets Ning apart from other social networking sites is that you join groups that a user created. I love it! While in Ning I created profiles with two different groups my LIS768 class (http://lis768.ning.com/profile/Aimee) and the Library 2.0 (http://library20.ning.com/profile/Aimee) group. Thanks to The Utopian Librarian for putting together the class Ning, I’m having a blast playing around with it!
I think something like this has great potential for libraries both on the staff and user level. First, it would be a great way for staff to stay connected and share things with each other instead of the old fashioned (ok it’s going to be weird saying this is old fashioned!) let’s-send-out-an-email-and-copy-the-whole-staff way of communicating. Also, it would be great for users to be able to be a part of their library’s Ning group and learn about library news and events that way. It’s just a way of stepping outside of the library website box!
Libraries can make use of custom content generators as a free, easy, and creative way to create posters and marketing tools for themselves. If you’ve never heard of custom content generators let me explain myself before I go any further. Trust me, you’re going to want to know what this is. A custom content generator is a website of web service that helps you, the user, to take something (a picture for example) and customize it to fit your needs. This is also a form of user-generated content.
Some libraries are using custom content generators to create ads for their events. For example, Lewis and Clark Library System hosted a gaming night for which they created these really cool looking poster ads with different characters talking about going to gaming at the library. You can see an example on their Flickr account. One way that I keep track of the latest, and sometimes most interesting, content generators is through The Generator Blog. They usually post 2 or 3 different generator sites per week that can do some really cool things for your library or just might be fun to play around with. My recent favorites are the Pocket Emo Generator and the M&Ms Character Generator.
Meet Madame Punky In Your Face (they provide naming options for you!)
Who’s to say all librarians can’t be M&Ms out there on the internet?!
The library I chose to IM was the Phillips Memorial Library at Providence College in Rhode Island. The librarian was extremely courteous and willing to help. The questions I asked her were:
When did you start using IM reference?
What prompted your library to start using IM reference?
On average, how many questions do you receive by IM per day?
Do you publicize that you offer IM reference anywhere besides your website?
Is there any type of question that is harder to answer via IM?
Are there any barriers or problems that you have encountered using IM reference?
This particular library started using IM reference about 2 years ago. I was very surprised when the librarian told me they usually only get 2 or 3 questions per week! Then when I asked what they do to publicize the service she said that they have it on the website and will occasionally mention it in instruction sessions. I’m wondering if there’s a correlation between the number of students that use it and the lack of publicizing?! She also mentioned that any question that’s at all complicated is harder to answer through IM. I can see where some questions that you get in an academic library setting would be harder to answer because of the whole information literacy movement.
While free IM clients like AIM and Meebo are excellent, I tend to the the new wave in academic libraries will lean more towards services like Elluminate. Elluminate is video conferencing software that allows the conference administrator to push content at the other people in the conference and receive instant messaged or voice questions. I know it’s not as nice for on demand information literacy instruction, but I can see where IM clients wouldn’t work as well either.
